On this seventy-eighth anniversary, the National Council of Churches in India, an ecumenical expression of Protestant and Orthodox Churches as well as ecumenical organizations, regional councils and agencies in India, joins in solemn remembrance with the Palestinian people. We do not commemorate a single event of the past, but rather acknowledge a continuous and daily reality of displacement, dispossession, and suffering that has defined Palestinian existence since 1948, the ongoing Nakba.
The term “Nakba”, meaning catastrophe, describes the deliberate and systematic mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland, the destruction of hundreds of villages, and the creation of a refugee crisis that remains unresolved to this day. More than 750,000 people were displaced. Over 500 Palestinian villages were depopulated or destroyed. Families who fled or were driven from their homes have never been permitted to return, despite successive United Nations resolutions affirming their rights.
The current war in Gaza has produced destruction without precedent. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed since October 2023, with many more injured, displaced, or missing beneath the rubble. Entire neighbourhoods, hospitals, schools, and places of worship lie destroyed. Hunger and disease stalk the population. For years before this war, Gaza was described by human rights observers as an “open-air prison”, more than two million people living under severe restrictions on movement, trade, and access to essential services. Generations have grown up trapped between blockade, poverty, and recurring bombardment. Meanwhile, in the West Bank, settlements have expanded relentlessly on land confiscated from Palestinians, settlements that international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention, considers illegal. For many Palestinians, the issue is no longer merely occupation but the steady erosion of any possibility of a viable state.
We recognise that Israel insists its actions are driven by security imperatives, particularly after the October 7 attacks. The continued occupation, blockade, and repeated wars have not produced peace, only deepened cycles of grief and suffering on all sides. The tragedy is that two peoples remain imprisoned by competing historical traumas: one shaped by centuries of antisemitic persecution, the other by dispossession, occupation, and statelessness. As Scripture reminds us, “The Lord loves justice” (Psalm 37:28), and “Let justice roll down like waters” (Amos 5:24).
We speak with sorrow about a painful reality that, for decades, large segments of the global Christian community have remained largely silent in the face of the ongoing Nakba. This silence is particularly striking because one of the world’s oldest Christian communities lives in Palestine, a community that has steadily dwindled under occupation and displacement. Bethlehem itself, the birthplace of our faith, has seen its Christian population shrink dramatically. Our Palestinian Christian siblings have cried out for solidarity, yet their voices have too often been met with indifference.
We confess that this silence has functioned as complicity. When the Church does not speak against the confiscation of land, the demolition of homes, and the killing of civilians, the moral witness of Christianity is wounded. As the prophet Isaiah declares, “Learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed” (Isaiah 1:17).
We also acknowledge with concern the rapid growth of Christian Zionism, a movement that interprets biblical prophecy as mandating unquestioning support for the modern state of Israel, often regardless of its actions toward Palestinians. This theology frequently renders Palestinian Christians invisible or as obstacles to divine plan.
The National Council of Churches in India affirms that no theological framework which sanctifies the permanent subjugation of one people by another can claim fidelity to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The same Scriptures that speak of God’s faithfulness also command love of neighbour and justice for the stranger. Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Matthew 5:9), and “Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me” (Matthew 25:45). Christian Zionism, in its most extreme forms, has inverted these commands, offering uncritical support to a political project while remaining indifferent to the cries of Palestinian children.
We call upon churches across India and around the world to break their silence. We urge believers to listen to Palestinian Christian voices, to examine teachings on Christian Zionism against the life of Jesus, who was born under occupation, who identified with the oppressed, and who proclaimed good news to the poor and liberation to the captives (Luke 4:18).
We call upon the international community to stop treating Palestinian rights as negotiable. Justice cannot remain selective. Human rights cannot apply differently depending on who violates them.
Seventy-eight years after the Nakba began, the choice is clear: coexistence based on equality and international law, or perpetual war. The future will be secured only when Israelis and Palestinians alike can live as equals, with dignity, freedom, and humanity recognised on both sides of history.
“He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)
Rev. Asir Ebenezer
General Secretary
